The Republican version of civil rights (no minorities need apply)

The Republican Party's new patron saint

Mark Graber captures the sickening conservative dogma behind the Republican Supreme Court's school re-segregation decision in , The Conscientious Objectors Speak Balkinization blog 06/28/07. Just to be clear, he's outlining the conservative dogma lying behind it in a critical way, definitely not approving of the Roberts Four resegregation decision:

Today’s opinions in the Seattle school case feature the too usual lectures from conservative justices on the meaning of the "good" civil rights movement, the one which asserted that "the constitution is color-blind." Of course, neither Chief Justice Roberts nor any other member of the majority were actually members of that "good" civil rights movement. To paraphrase Dick Cheney, they had other priorities at a time when police dogs were being set upon African-American children who dared insist on the right to drink at the same water-fountains as white children. Indeed, Roberts, Alito, and Scalia were proud to be in the vanguard of the movement that pried from the Democratic Party those who set the dogs upon the children (and those who applauded that behavior). They could do so in good conscience because somewhere in the late 1960s, the "good" civil rights movement was replaced by the "bad" civil rights movement, a movement which insists that persons of color be actual as well as pro forma, legal equals. Curiously, this transition took place even though the vast majority of participants in the "good" civil rights movement remained in the "bad" civil rights movement, included almost the entire leadership. By comparison [in the conservative dogma embraced as Constitutional law by the Roberts Four], on this history, George Wallace became the person who best understood that the central principle of BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION was that no "innocent" white person could ever be harmed in the effort to secure racial equality and any person of color who claimed covert race discrimination would have to produce a smoking gun the equivalent of the smoking guns which convinced the Burger Court that the Alabama Constitutional Convention of 1900ish was committed to race supremacy. Recognizing that George Wallace and Strom Thurmond are the true heirs to Martin Luther King, Justice Roberts and his allies feel the need to direct lectures on BROWN to the "bad" civil rights movement in the hope that we may be converted.

Greg Anrig, Jr. at TPMCafe looks at some of the ways in which stock conservative/segregationist dogma was embraced by the Roberts Four in the re-segregation decision Thursday: Triumph of the Bumper Sticker 06/28/07.

This is your country on OxyContin.

Tags: racism, segregation